Games Convention Asia (GCA)

Just last Saturday, 20th Sep, the Games Convention Asia (GCA) was held at Suntec Convention Hall. Many many games were displayed there, from the popular to the soon-to-be-released, from big huge companies to small private organisations. There was just no end to the games as well as their consoles. Terminals and consoles were packed with the young and the young at heart, and several mascots roamed the hall.

TP's GET even had their own booth, showcasing games that the students had developed!

Well, I never knew THAT many people were into cosplay(CosCon - Cosplay Contest): numerous groups of friends gathered in and out the convention hall, preparing their makeup and and image to portray their favourite characters in the games. Everyone had great fun with cosplay, posing for photos and taking pictures. =)(Nice Photos at CosCon - Here and Here and Here)


But the main highlight of the convention had to be the competition of a number of games. Amongst these games, one of them, DotA, had 2 team finalists compete with each other, with their match flashed on a great big projector screen for all spectators to see. The battle was intense; both sides put up a good fight. It was a pity I couldn't stay to watch the match end.

So much for the wordy paragraphs, we'll let the pictures do the talking:

*Update
More nice photos that we took

I am a Linux

Yup! I use Macbook pro as well as IBM thinkpad. I run Linux on both of them. Well ....

let's start with Mac first then
Mac 01


Mac 02


Mac 03


Mac 04


Well here is a cool one!!!!!!!!!!!!


So fun right?
Let see what Microsoft Says
PC 01


PC 02


PC 03


Sometime I like to be Mac.




Sometime I like to be PC.


Well I used Linux quite often as well.
Novell 01


Novell 02


Novell 03

Now you see, Now you don't

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC)(Wiki) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator.

Click the following picture to see the specification of LHC.


Large Hadron Collider Rap.



What does this has to do with Mobile Communication?
Well, Let think about Global Positioning System (GPS). GPS requires very actual clock (atomic clock) (Wiki) to measure location. This technology comes from particle physics. We learned particle physics by experimenting with particle accelerator.

Quantum Teleportation may be further enhance through the LHC.

What is Quantum Teleportation (Wiki)


So what has Quantum Teleportation to do with Mobile Communication?
For current state, it can help to provide secure wireless communication. Today there are many engineer and scientist that are working in this area. (IEEE Paper)

You may want to ask how does LHC comes into the picture then?
One thing of which is Superluminal (Wiki) Communication. We are still not able to achieve Superluminal communication, we can make use of LHC.

Okay, okay what if LHC still cannot resolve no-communication theorem (Wiki) and the theory still holds?

Well, we still can make use of LHC to learn more about neutrino!

What has neutrino has to do with communication? Well today, all mobile communication uses electromagnetic wave for communication. Some scientist belief that neutrino communication are more efficient than electromagnetic transmissions. (Original Story)

Comics on LHC

*Updated
More Comics on LHC

Bug in DNS

Well, I know I'm slow, and the news is a little late, but better late than never, they always say.

Just wanted to share this piece of news, that, from my understanding so far, has been a little hushed-up. Its regarding a bug that hackers have exploited in Domain Name Servers / System(DNS), to re-route internet traffic to their own websites. These malicious hackers use their own websites to impersonate official / commercial websites, for reasons such as collecting personal information. This bug in the DNS vulnerability is a great security issue, and many top security researchers are concerned. Several patches have been developed to address the issue, so the situation is generally under control.

*DNS - name-to-address mapping system that translates names you can remember (such as www.doxpara.com) to numbers the Internet can route (66.240.226.139)

You can read the full story, news and updates at:
http://www.doxpara.com/?p=1162 OR
http://www.doxpara.com/

This is what I understand of the situation so far, and it has been most interesting, considering the fact that I learnt this from a gaming forum. Thus, games DO benefit us. =)

To pass or not to pass

Let's continue with the RFID security issues.

okay, we know that RFID on credit is not safe, but you don't have a RFID credit card, do you think that you are safe? Well read the following and determine it for yourself.

"A German computer security consultant has shown that he can clone the electronic passports that the United States and other countries are beginning to distribute this year. " This story <here> runs 2 years ago!

What is e-passport?
E-passport contains your bio-information in RFID chip that is placed in the passport. All US Visa Waiver Program country passport would be in have that in place and Singapore is one of the country.
The standard is from ICAO BAC International Civil Aviation Organization Basic Access Control which US Feds think that it is safe <Original Story from here>.

Singapore new passport is ICAO BAC standard using NXP chipset <Get more info from here> and <here>.

"Dutch chipmaker NXP Semiconductors has sued a university in The Netherlands to block publication of research that details security flaws in NXP's Mifare Classic wireless smart cards."
<Get the story from here>

Here is the youtube video from the running story that crack the NXP card from london tube (*tube is MRT from UK):



Some more information about the RFID passport.


Can the clone passport be fake proof? Yes for
<Original Story here>

What can we do then? This may help to solve the problem.

New staff in the house

Our diploma has recently had a new addition of staff!

Miss Pauline joined TP just 1 week ago, and had her staff orientation of TP. Here is what she has to say thus far:

How did you become a lecturer in TP?

I wanted to have the opportunity to team up with the young and fresh programmers, and impart my knowledge to them. This is due to my work in my previous company, where I managed several younger programmers.

What were you doing previously?

I worked at a company writing software applications and developments.

How did you find the staff orientation?

The HR people were very warm, and they taught me many things about TP.

What module(s) will you be teaching?

I'm not too sure yet, it hasn't been finalised. However, I expect that it will be more related to desktop or mobile programming.

How do you feel to be part of the TP IIT MWC teaching team?

So far, I'm new here, so I don't know what's ahead at the moment. I don't know how it will be like later on, but I am happy, and I want to value-add to the teaching.

When will you start teaching?

I'm not too sure yet, it also hasn't been finalised. But it could be the upcoming semester or the following one.


Well, let us welcome Miss Pauline with a warm round of applause!!
*applause*
=)

Smart or Dumb Card?

The famous MythBuster are not allow to show the security weakness on (credit card that embedded RFID in it) smart card

" Texas Instruments comes on along with chief legal counsel for American Express, Visa, Discover, and everybody else... They were way, way outgunned and they absolutely made it really clear to Discovery that they were not going to air this episode talking about how hackable this stuff was, and Discovery backed way down being a large corporation that depends upon the revenue of the advertisers. Now it's on Discovery's radar and they won't let us go near it.



Well luckily we still have BoingBoingTV



Do you know that you are using RFID everyday, and you are also subject to the same security risk?

BRIC

What is BRIC?

BRIC means (Brazil, Russia, India, China)

Currently they are bigger growth in terms of mobile subscriber.
Singapore currently only have 6 million, these countries have:

Brazil 135.9 million mobile subscriber
Russia 87.26 million mobile subscriber
India 296.08 million mobile subscriber
China 680 million mobile subscriber
(wiki for other countries)

Why they are important? They are so call the emerging markets, as they are rapidly growing their economy, and they have so many internet user (wiki) and mobile subscriber.
(Story)